Liebster Nomination

In the blogging world, there’s something called the Liebster Award for new bloggers.  It recognizes people just starting out in a ‘pat on the back’ way.  I have been nominated for it by Celina at QuirkingitOut.com (Thank you!), and as part of that I was given a set of questions to answer.  My answers follow and my nominations for the award follow those.

1. What inspires you?
Most of my blog is about issues my child is dealing with at school, so a great deal of my inspiration comes from watching her. She’s smart and funny, and is just quirky enough to have issues fitting in. It’s wonderful watching her grow, and heartbreaking watching her try and be like others while keeping track of herself. I’m also inspired by what I read. There are some amazing books out there (I’m finishing Most Likely to Succeed right now) and they make me see things differently. My final inspiration, and one of the biggest that I have, is my husband. He challenges what I think and how I see the world. We don’t have a marriage where we always agree on everything, but rather one where we both hold our own. Discussing things with him makes me have to clarify my thoughts and arguments, and not infrequently realize that my original position wasn’t quite right.

2. If you could visit me in Paris, what’s one thing we would have to do?

During Spring Break when I was in tenth grade I visited Paris with my sister. My mom told her to make sure I saw the Musee d’Orsay, but we ran out of time. Instead, she took me to a postcard stand outside the Louvre and showed me postcards of “the 10 best paintings in the Musee.” I was told to tell our parents that we’d actually gone to the museum so they wouldn’t get mad. If I were to visit you in Paris, that’s where we’d go – it’s on my bucket list.

3. What is your biggest goal with your blog?

My blog started as something I was going to write almost as a journal. As I’ve written more and more, that’s changed. Now, I see it as a place to better my writing as I head into graduate school. I’ve also been asked if I’d ever consider publishing a book of essays, and my blog is a place to start collecting them and clarifying what I want to write about. With that said, I still want to keep it a calm place for me to go and reset my head when I’m having a rough day.

4. What is your biggest fear?

My biggest fear has always been failure. Unfortunately, for the first thirty or so years of my life that fear meant that I didn’t do anything. Over the past few years, I’ve started putting myself out there (the fact that I even have a blog is an indication of that) and it’s been interesting where that’s taken me. There are still days where I want to hide, because if I hide from everything I can’t fail at anything.

5. Would you rather be wealthy and stuck in one place, or poor but able to go anywhere?

I would rather travel. The world is a fascinating place and that’s something that all the money in the world can’t teach you if you don’t ever go anywhere. Looking things up on the internet isn’t the same as finding out what the smell of the docks in Charleston, SC is. Pictures are nice, but they don’t do justice to the look of the Mojave Desert when the heat is so bad that it makes everything start to look shaky.

6. Donuts or coffee?

Coffee. You can’t be awake enough to find the donuts if you haven’t had your morning coffee.

7. Most embarrassing moment?

I wore a grey, smocked sweat suit to school one day in second grade. While that should have been embarrassing enough in itself, I spilled spaghetti all over myself at lunch and was made to wear my stained clothes for the rest of the day. I still remember the feeling of spending the day covered in lunch, which wasn’t good to begin with. It was years before I ate spaghetti again.

8. How do you start your day?

I start my day with a 5 am workout – either the rowing machine or abs. I hate to exercise, but I’m determined to get in shape this year. With two kids it’s the only time I can be sure they won’t bother me. That’s followed with coffee (sweet, sweet coffee) and breakfast. Then there’s the insanity of getting a five-year-old to the bus stop with a three-year-old in tow. The most important thing in all of my morning is the hug and kiss from my husband and checking in with each other before the day gets out of hand.

9. What do you do when you don’t feel like writing?

When I don’t feel like writing, I read. I love my books and getting lost in them. I read almost exclusively non-fiction, mainly education or politics/history. Usually something I read can tweak my head into finding something to write about.

10. What’s the absolute best thing to watch on Netflix?

I’m a politics and history person, so my go-to is West Wing. It’s brilliantly written and acted. I think I’ve watched the whole series 4 or 5 times.

11. Which of your dreams/goals scares you?

Of everything I want to do, writing a book scares me the most. It’s nerve-wracking to write something and put it out there for other people to read. It’s a strange enough feeling with my blog, but publishing something that could be found on Amazon or in Barnes and Noble terrifies me. Through that fear, though, I can see how amazing it would feel to be able to walk into the store and see my name on something that will get picked up and (hopefully) appreciated by someone I’ll never meet except across my words.

My nominations are:

hardcorehope.com (Rose Fischer)

ourrachblogs.com (Rachel Hawkins)

lifeintheusa.org (Anita Desabhatla)

shutterfliesphotography.wordpress.com (Paige Butler)

 

My questions to them:

1. What is your favorite book?
2. What is your favorite place to go to regularly?
3. What is your favorite food?
4. What is your dream vacation?
5. Describe your biggest success…
6. and your biggest failure.
7. Who is the most influential person in your life?
8. What is your happiest memory?
9. Coffee or tea?
10. Who was your best teacher and why?
11. What is your favorite season and why?